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JanetRunberg

The Difference between Show Dogs and Remote Office IT

I’ve been binge-watching dog shows lately: national dog shows, regional dog shows. Don’t ask me why. I don’t even have a dog. There’s just something about all those different sizes and temperaments and ways of strutting around (I’m talking about the trainers, too) that’s interesting and, because there’s a lot on the line, hopeful. It put me in mind of IT in remote offices. bigstock-show dog-203111410.jpg

Remote offices and branch offices (ROBOs for short) are like show dogs in that each one is truly unique. They come in different shapes and sizes, have different needs, and are managed by a variety of different types of people with different skill levels. And they each need to be catered to in very specific ways, if you want them to perform at their best. Managing one can be stressful. If you have several, it can sometimes be chaotic.

For those who manage ROBOs, at least, there is hope.

Hyperconvergence simplifies IT for ROBOs

Unlike dog trainers, IT organizations have an easy path out of remote office chaos. Every day, businesses who have struggled to run workloads on legacy infrastructures in multiple sites are switching over to hyperconverged infrastructures, also known as HCI. Here’s why:

  • Hyperconverged platforms consolidate servers, storage, networking, and (in the case of HPE SimpliVity) all required data services into a single 2U chassis – fewer devices means a smaller footprint and lower TCO
  • HCI lets you standardize on an IT building-block approach, making deployment, management and upgrades simple
  • The more sophisticated HCI platforms give you built-in data protection and simple centralized management capabilities across every site

Multiply these benefits across all of your ROBOs, and you begin to see the benefits hyperconverged infrastructure can provide.

Here’s another advantage: Support for hyperconverged solutions is much more straightforward than in traditional environments and can easily be handled centrally or with existing IT staff in the remote sites. Specialized training is not required for on-site administrators. And because every site is a mirror of the others, tasks that were previously complex in a traditional environment now become simpler. HCI admins end up devoting more time to business needs and less time to maintaining infrastructure.

HPE SimpliVity customers reap the benefits

Many customers already understand the value of this consolidated approach to the datacenter. Petrobas Oil & Gas Company is part of one of the largest oil and gas groups in the world. They deployed the HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged platform for data protection on a floating production vessel where they had no IT personnel. Simac, a Belgian solutions integrator and service provider, uses the hyperconverged solution to power its remotely hosted application and network performance monitoring service, saying “HPE SimpliVity solved our application performance and system administration challenges.” Accounting firm Tanner, LLC set up an HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure in their main office and remote datacenter. CIO Matt Huff says, “Where the rubber hits the road, is in the backup and restore operations…. Copying a VM, cloning a VM, backing up a VM, restoring an entire VM—it all happens in seconds.”

Dog shows might beat ROBOs for pure entertainment value. But in the IT world, HPE SimpliVity powered by Intel® wins Best in Show. Learn more about hyperconverged technology in this Gorilla Guide to Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Remote Office/Branch Office or download the free e-book, Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Dummies.

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About the Author

JanetRunberg

I’ve been with HP/HPE for over 12 years covering data storage, software-defined storage, and now hyperconvergence and software-defined infrastructure as part of the HPE Storage team.